Dota 2 Third Party Trading Business Paints A Bright Future

Share This Press Release

Dota 2 is one of the world's most popular MOBAs (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games) currently sporting roughly 430,000 average concurrent players and over 10 million active players worldwide as of October 2018.

November 19, 2018 — Smart Experience FZC, a United Arab Emirates based company, has just launched an e-commerce shop for virtual items in the hugely popular online game Dota 2 over at https://gamerall.com/dota2
Dmitriy Ryzhikov, co-founder and director estimates that "sales will quickly spike and hit over 100,000 USD in December 2018 thanks to our unique business model and marketing expertise".

Dota 2 is one of the world's most popular MOBAs (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games) currently sporting roughly 430,000 average concurrent players and over 10 million active players worldwide as of October 2018. Moreover, it is the biggest eSports game in the world as per its 25.5 million USD prize pool at the main eSports event The International 2018. Dota 2 is completely free to play and all of its official revenue, 406 million USD in 2017 alone, stems from microtransactions. These microtransactions take place at the official store and on the Steam marketplace which Valve, the company behind Dota 2, owns and operates.

In the official store you can purchase a few hundred different cosmetic items directly from Valve while on the Steam marketplace, which is a player to player exchange, there are around 30,000 Dota 2 items listed at any time. These Dota 2 items listed on the Steam marketplace are either found by players during gaming sessions or purchased by players from the official store. Valve monetizes the Dota 2 transactions on the Steam market place by charging a 10% fee.

The gold standard for microtransaction revenue in the gaming industry is around 0.5 USD per average concurrent player and day assuming that the game company monopolizes the microtransactions. For Dota 2 in 2017, however, the figure was just over 2 USD per average concurrent player and day which likely means that at least 75% of Dota 2 revenue stems from the Steam marketplace.

The story does not end here, however, for the Steam marketplace is not the only place where players exchange Dota 2 items. There are multiple third party owned and operated Dota 2 exchange websites and their aggregate number of listed Dota 2 items rival the 30,000 figure seen at the Steam market place. What attracts players to these third party exchange websites is first and foremost the ability to instantly trade an item after the transaction has taken place for purposes of speculation or simply gifting to a fellow player. The fees are also only about 5% per transaction compared to the aforementioned 10% on the Steam market place. It should be noted that on the Steam Market place every sold item has a 7 day cool down during which it can not be traded which is a safe guard implemented by Valve to disincentivize fraudulent transactions. Without cool down or even the ability to retract transactions the third party exchange websites are shouldering a much bigger risk at a much lower commission rate. They mitigate the risk with more in-depth KYC, progressive velocity controls, and irreversible payment methods. As for the lower commission their operational costs are obviously much lower than what Valve has for Dota 2 so it easy for them to stomach.

It should be noted that players do not need to use any exchange website at all. They can trade their items with any other player at will as long as there is no cool down applied to the item. The exchange websites simply makes it easier to buy the exact item they want at the correct market price. What these exchange websites cannot do is to maintain a stock and offer up rare and popular items independently of what players are currently looking to sell. Neither can they offer payment methods that are not instantly completed online. Nor can them market items individually seeing as availability is too variable.

This is where third party player operated shops such as Gamerall.com with a tailored selection of items and payment methods enter the picture. Here items are either stocked or sourced on demand from exchange websites or individual players, and where the payment methods range in the hundreds covering all major cash, card, bank transfer, and cryptocurrencies worldwide. With so many potential customers across the globe this is a niche model limited by market expertise rather than by being the first established go to place for trade as is the case for the aforementioned exchange websites.